Solid state ignition systems are in wide spread use today. Many have advanced functions. However, they are deficient in an area that many of the systems claim to excel at, power dissipation, or more succinctly energy management such that power dissipation is minimized. Often ignition system's components are pushed beyond the well defined area of their formal specification in order to optimize their performance. This becomes even more complex and tedious as several analog components, such as the sensing devices as well as power devices are tuned for optimal performance. For economy of scale the circuitry is often fully customized. This usually results in long development cycles as extending the components' performance requires some empirical design practice. Previous designs also rely on active trimming of key components in the production environment adding unnecessary complexity to the manufacturing process. Relying on tuned analog components necessarily compromises optimal energy management.
Also, integral to these systems are sophisticated means for determining diagnostic information about the performance of the system for various reasons including managing energy during abnormal operation conditions, such as a when a spark plug is fouled or an ignition coil's secondary is shorted to name a few. Here to previous designs often fall short of optimal performance as some important diagnostic information is not retrieved and applied.